The English Village Community / Examined in its Relations to the Manorial and Tribal Systems and to the Common or Open Field System of Husbandry; An Essay in Economic History (Reprinted from the Fourth Edition)

by Frederic Seebohm

II. THE CONNEXION BETWEEN THE SAXON 'HAM,' THE GERMAN 'HEIM,' AND THE FRANKISH 'VILLA.'

It would be unwise to build too much upon a mere resemblance in terms, but we have seen that the Saxon words generally used for manor were 'ham' and 'tun.' [p254]

We have seen how King Alfred, in the remarkable passage quoted in an earlier chapter, put in contrast the temporary log hut on lænland with the permanent hereditary possession—the 'ham' or manor. This latter was, as we have seen, the estate of a manorial lord, with a community of dependants or serfs upon it, and not a village of coequal freemen. Hence the word ham did not properly describe the clusters of scattered homesteads in the Welsh district. In King Alfred's time Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, and even parts of Wiltshire were still, as already mentioned, regarded as Welsh. They formed what was known as West Wales. The manorial system had encroached far into them, but it would seem that the phraseology of the earlier system had not yet wholly disappeared. King Alfred in his will carefully abstained from applying the word ham to his numerous possessions in these districts.

He disposed in his will of more than thirty separately named estates in this West Welsh district, but he invariably used, in describing them, the word 'land'—the land or the landes at such and such a place;—and he concluded this part of his will with the statement, 'These are all that I have in Wealcyne, except in Truconshirie' (in Cornwall). Then in the rest of his will King Alfred disposed of nearly as many estates in the south-east or manorial districts of England, and here he immediately changed his style. It was no more the land, at this place and that, but the ham at such and such a place.[339] In the old English translation of the will given in the Liber de Hyda [p255] 'land' is rendered by 'lond' and 'ham' invariably by 'twune.' [340] Thus without saying that the words ham and tun always were used in this sense, and could be used in no other, they were generally at least synonymous with manor.

As late as the time of Bede, the suffix 'ham' or 'tun' was not yet so fully embodied with the names of places as to form a part of them. In the Cambridge MS. of his works 'ham' is still written as a separate word.

The German heim.

It is a curious fact that the suffix 'ton' or 'tun' was practically used nowhere on the Continent in the names of places; but the other manorial suffix, 'ham,' in one or other of its forms—'hem,' 'heim,' or 'haim'—was widely spread. And as in those districts where it was found most abundantly, it translated itself, as in England, into the Latin villa, its early geographical distribution may have an important significance.

Geographical distribution of hams and heims.

In England.

On the annexed map is marked for each county the per-centage of the names of places mentioned in the Domesday Survey ending in ham.[341] This will give a fair view of their distribution in Saxon England. It will be seen that the 'hams' of England were most numerous in the south-eastern counties, from Lincolnshire and Norfolk to Sussex, finding their densest centre in Essex.[342]

In Picardy.

Passing on to the Continent, very similar evidence, but of earlier date, is afforded for a small district surrounding St. Omer, in Picardy, by a survey of the [p256] estates of the Abbey of St. Bertin, taken about the year 850. The 'villas' there mentioned as 'ad fratrum usus pertinentes,' and which were distinctly manors, are twenty-five in number, and the names of fifteen of them ended in 'hem.' [343]

Similar evidence is given for various districts in Germany in the list of donations to the abbeys, the abbots of which possessed estates in different parts of Germany—sometimes whole manors or villages, sometimes only one or two holdings in this or that place.

In the various abbey cartularies.

Heims most numerous in the Roman province of Germania Prima.

On the accompanying map are marked the sites of places mentioned in the cartularies of the Abbeys of Fulda,[344] Corvey,[345] St. Gall,[346] Frising,[347] Wizenburg,[348] Lorsch,[349] and in other early records, ending in heim in the various districts of Germany. The result is remarkable. It shows that these heims were most numerous in what was once the Roman province of Germania Prima, on the left bank of the upper Rhine, the present Elsass, and on both sides of the Rhine around Mayence—districts conquered by the Frankish and Alamannic tribes in the fifth century, but inhabited by Germans from the time of Tacitus, and perhaps of Cæsar, and so districts in which German populations had come very early and continued long under Roman rule. In this district the heims rose in [p257] number to 80 per cent. of the places mentioned in the charters.

Distribution in Europe of Local Names Ending in 'ham', 'heim', 'ingen', 'ingahem', or without further suffix.
German patronymic village names in France.

See Larger: [ Ending in 'ham" or without further suffix]. [Ending in 'heim', 'ingen', or 'ingahem', with German names in France].
Go to: [List of Illustrations]

There were many, but not so many, heims in the valley of the Neckar; but everywhere (with small local exceptions) they faded away in districts outside the Roman boundary, except in Frisia, where the proportion was large.

Now, the question is, what do these heims represent?

Heim and villa interchange.

We have already said that they interchange like the English 'ham' with the Latin 'villa.' The districts where they occur most thickly, where they formed 80 per cent. of the names of places in the time of the monastic grants, and which had formed for several centuries the Roman province of Upper Germany, shade off into districts which abounded with local names ending in villa.

Wilare, weiler, and wyl.

They did so a thousand years ago, and they do so now. It is only needful to examine the Ordnance Survey of any part of these districts to see how, even now, the places with names ending in 'heim' are mixed with others ending in 'villa,' or 'wilare,' or the Germanised form of the word, 'weiler,' or 'wyl;' and further, how the region abounding with 'heims' shades off into a district abounding with names ending in 'villa,' or 'wilare,' and we may add the equally manorial Latin or Romance termination curtis, or 'court,' and its German equivalent 'hof,' or 'hoven.' And such was the case also at the date of the earliest monastic charters.

This fact in itself at least suggests very strongly that here, as in England, 'ham' and 'villa' were synonyms for the same thing, sometimes called by its [p258] Latin and sometimes by its German name. Indeed, actual instances may be found in the charters of these districts in which the name of the same place has sometimes the suffix villa or wilare and sometimes heim.[350]

Moreover, these places which are thus called 'villas' or 'heims' in the monastic charters were to all intents and purposes manors as far back as the records allow us to trace them.

The earliest surveys of the possessions of the abbeys leave no doubt as to their manorial character.[351]

And the earliest charters prove that they were often at least manorial estates before they were handed over to the monks.

Indeed, a careful examination of the Wizenburg and Lorsch charters and donations leads to the result that these 'heims' and 'villas' were often royal manors, 'villæ fiscales' on the royal domains, just as Tidenham and Hysseburne were in England. They seem to have often been held as benefices by a dux [p259] or a comes, or other beneficiary of the king, just as Saxon royal manors were held by the king's thanes as 'læn-land.' [352]

Thus the royal domains of Frankish kings were apparently under manorial management, and practically divided up into manors. The boundaries or 'marchæ' of one manor often divided it from the next manor;[353] while one 'villa' or 'heim' often had sub-manors upon it, as in the case of Tidenham.[354]

Thus the 'villa,' 'heim,' or 'manor,' seems to have been the usual fiscal and judicial territorial unit under Frankish rule, as the manor once was and the parish now is in England. And this alone seems to afford a satisfactory explanation of the use of the word 'villa' in the early Frankish capitularies, and in the Salic laws. It is there used apparently for both private estates and the smallest usual territorial unit for judicial or fiscal purposes.[355]

When a law speaks of a person attacking or taking possession of the 'villa' of another, the 'villa' is clearly a private estate. But when it speaks of a [p260] crime committed 'between two villas,' the word seems to be used for a judicial jurisdiction, just as if we should say 'between two parishes.'

This double use of the word becomes intelligible if 'villa' may be used as 'manor,' and if the whole country—the terra regis with the rest—were divided in the fifth century into 'villas' or 'manors,' but hardly otherwise.

The remarkable passage in the Salic laws 'De Migrantibus,' which provides that no one can move into and settle in another 'villa' without the license of those 'qui in villa consistunt,' but that after a twelvemonth's stay unmolested he shall remain secure, 'sicut et alii vicini,' seems at first sight to imply a free village.[356] But another clause which permits the emigrant to settle if he has the royal 'præceptum' to do so,[357] suggests that the 'villa' in question was one of the royal 'villas'—a 'villa fiscalis' in the demesne of the Crown.[358]

Ham and villa in the Salic laws,

The Salic law has come down to us in Latin versions, but the Malberg glosses contain some indications that the word villa was used as a translation of variations of the word ham, then applied by the Franks to both kinds of villas in the manorial sense.

The old tradition recorded in the prologue to the [p261] later versions of the Salic laws, whatever it be worth, attributes their first compilation to four chosen men, whose names and residences are as follows:—Uuisogastis, Bodogastis, Salegastis, Uuidogastis, in loca nominancium, Bodochamæ, Salchamæ, Uuidochamæ.

In another version of the prologue instead of the words 'in loca nominancium,' the reading is 'in villis,' and the termination of the names is 'chem,' 'hem,' and 'em.' [359]

and in the Malberg glosses.

Dr. Kern, in editing the Malberg glosses, points out that the gloss in Title xlii. shows that 'ham' might be used by the Franks in the sense of 'court'—'king's court,'—just as in some parts of the Netherlands, especially in the Betuwe, 'ham' is even now a common name for ancient mansions, such as in mediæval Latin were termed 'curtes.' Thus he shows that the Frankish words 'chami theuto' (the bull of the ham) were translated in Latin as 'taurum regis,' cham being taken to mean king's court.[360] Possibly the lord of a villa provided the 'village bull,' just as till recent times in the Hitchin manor, as we have seen, the village bull was under the manorial customs provided for the commoners by the rectorial sub-manor.

So in another place the word 'chamestalia' seems to be used in the Malberg gloss for 'in truste dominica,' [361] the 'cham' again being taken in a thoroughly manorial sense.

That there were manorial lords with lidi and tributarii—semi-servile tenants—as well as servi, or slaves, under them, is clear from other passages of the Salic laws.[362] [p262]

But the 'ham' of the Malberg glosses seems to have had sometimes at least the king for its lord. And this brings us again to the double use in the Salic laws of the word 'villa.' It seems, as we have said, to have been used not only for a 'villa' in private hands, but also in a wider sense for the usual fiscal or judicial territorial unit, whether under the jurisdiction of a manorial lord, or of the 'villicus' or 'judex,' or beneficiary of the king.

Lastly, the early date of the Salic laws bringing the Frankish and Roman provincial rule into such close proximity, irresistibly raises the question[363] whether there may not have been an actual continuity, first between the Roman and Frankish villa, and secondly, between the Roman system of management of the imperial provincial domains during the later empire, and the Frankish system of manorial management of the 'terra regis' or 'villæ fiscales' after the Frankish conquest. If this should turn out to have been the case, then the further question will arise whether under the tribal system of the Germans the beginnings of manorial tendencies can be so far traced as to explain the ease with which Frankish and Saxon conquerors of the old Roman provinces fell into manorial ways, and adopted the manor as the normal type of estate.

This is the line of inquiry which it is now proposed to follow. [p263]